Snag a refurbished 32GB Nexus 5 for $140

The Nexus 5 may be growing long in the tooth, but it’s still worth checking out if you know what you’re getting into. Thankfully, if you’re interested in experimenting with one of Google’s most lauded Nexus releases, DailySteals is currently offering the handset refurbished for $140.

For you’re money, you’ll snag the 32GB Nexus 5 in black. If you’d rather opt for a white exterior, that will run you slightly more at $160. Now, keep in mind, this is 2013 hardware we’re talking about here. But if you’re interested in giving the Nexus 5 a go, this isn’t a bad deal.

On the other hand, if a much more current Nexus is more your thing, the handset’s spiritual successor, the Nexus 5X, is still available for just $199 through Project Fi.

See at DailySteals

Marshmallow update heads out to Xperia Z2, Z3 and Z3 Compact in Canada

The update to Android 6.0 Marshmallow is now headed to a few Sony Xperia smartphones across carriers in Canada. All told, the Xperia Z2, Xperia Z3 and Xperia Z3 Compact are all now receiving their over-the-air updates.

The update, which also began rolling out in India today, brings the addition of the Doze power-saving feature and Google’s Now on Tap. Additionally, Sony says the update contains the following:

• Enhanced privacy settings: Manage and control your application data permissions
• All new camera interface: Switch between modes and customise settings with simple gestures
• Xperia Messaging: Express yourself and get creative with easy in-app access to Stickers
• Direct Share: Share activity with friends, recent contacts and app lists

Depending on the rollout schedule, the update may take some time to land for everyone across carriers. If you’d like to check manually, you can head the “About Device” section of the Settings menu and tap ‘Software update.”

Have you received the update to Marshmallow yet? If so, let us know in the comments below!

Best cases for the HTC 10 (so far)

HTC’s new flagship is handsomely designed. Protect it from bumps and scratches.

Like any responsible phone owner, you’re probably considering a case for your HTC 10. It’s a brand new phone and you want to keep it as pristine as possible for as long as possible.

With a new phone, it can be hard to find a good case because not everyone is jumping onboard the new phone train, so reviews are limited. For the most part, we’re seeing TPU cases galore, but there are a few rubber and wallet cases and there’ll likely be many more to come upon the phone’s release.

We’ve rounded up the best cases (so far) for your gorgeous new HTC 10 that’ll hopefully keep it looking like new until the HTC 11 comes out!

• HTC Ice View
• Cimo Premium Slim Fit
• Tauri Premium Ultra Slim
• Vinve Folio
• Love Ying Crystal Clear Ultra

HTC Ice View

We’ll start with the coolest case you can buy for your HTC 10, which is HTC’s own Ice View. With the One M9, HTC had the Dot View to give us a peek at what’s happening on the phone. Ice View adds more detail to match the 10’s cleaned-up design.

The flip cover allows you to interact with your phone in so many ways that some people might not even need to lift it. You can take photos, read texts, control volume and music, turn on the flashlight, and tons more. Plus, the Ice View supports third party notifications like Instagram, Google+, and more.

If you struggle with covering up such a pretty phone but still want it protected, you might as well cover it up with a case that’s super cool and offer a ton of functionality on top of that protection.

See at HTC

Cimo Premium Slim Fit

A great standard for anyone who want a simple, minimal case that offers solid protection without breaking the bank, Cimo does it again. It’s got a tactile, satisfying grippy feeling and leaves all the essential ports and buttons open.

The beveled front edge leaves you worry free when leaving your HTC 10 facedown and the slim design means no unnecessary bulk in your pocket. If you’re looking for a case just because you know it’s the right thing to do, then Cimo is a solid place to start.

See at Amazon

Tauri Premium Ultra Slim

Tauri is all about the TPU case and they do it quite well. This is yet another offer that won’t add much bulk to your HTC 10, but will help it feel solid and protected. A soft shell like this is shock absorbent and won’t slip out of your hands. Tauri offers the Ultra Slim in a few different colors, so you can grab one to match your style, while remaining minimal.

The Premium Ultra Slim is quite flexible, so putting it on and taking it off your HTC 10 will be easy peasy, but try not to take it off too much because it could be come a little loose due to stretching. Also consider that, when buying the lighter gray case, you may notice a little bit of yellowing over time, since that’s what happens to TPU when it absorbs sunlight.

See at Amazon

Vinve Folio

Looking for a folio case that doubles as a stand for your HTC 10? Check out Vinve’s Folio case made of PU leather. It’s simple, but offers a cover for your screen without having to fiddle with a finicky screen protector (which don’t fit many new phones due to their curved screens).

The flip cover folds back on the spine to become a handy stand for hands-free video-watching, reading, or video-calling. The case is cut well, so that all the important buttons and ports are available without feeling like you’re leaving your phone open to damage. The leather texture also feels great and won’t slip.

See at Amazon

Love Ying Crystal Clear Ultra

Another great TPU cover that offers minimal bulk with cushioned shock absorbency is the Love Ying Crystal Clear. Like Tauri, Love Ying offers as view different colors to match your style; theirs are a little more vibrant and playful.

The cover is raised both on the front and the back, so you’re not putting your HTC 10 down right on its screen or right on the camera lens, which is a nice feature if you happen to drop it flat. It’s dust and scratch resistant and fits like a glove.

As with other TPU cases, just be aware that your case may yellow over time thanks to the Sun. Also be careful putting it on your HTC 10 and taking it off too much, since it might stretch and stop fitting so well. Other than that, it’s a great way to protect your phone without adding a ton of bulk or breaking the bank.

See at Amazon

What do you think?

When you get your HTC 10, let us know which case is your favorite by sounding off in the comments below!

HTC 10

• HTC 10 review
• HTC 10 specs
• These are the HTC 10 colors
• Our first photo and video samples
• Meet the Ice View case
• Join our HTC 10 forums

HTC
Verizon

EA is working with Titanfall’s Respawn on a new Star Wars game

A new game set in the Star Wars universe is coming.

EA has announced – on May the 4th (be with you), of course – that it has partnered with Respawn Entertainment on a new Star Wars game. It didn’t provide too many details about the upcoming title – apart from it will be a “third-person action adventure game.”

Jason West and Vince Zampella, who are best known for the Call of Duty franchise at Infinity Ward, founded Respawn Entertainment. It’s also the same studio behind Titanfall and Titanfall 2, the latter of which was just released in March for Xbox One and Windows PC.Patrick Soderlund, EA Studios’ Executive Vice President, said in a blog post that he spent time working with Zampella and his group. He noted “their obsession with making games” made Titanfall successful, and now, with a new team led by Stig Asmussen, Star Wars fans will get to see “what they can do when you combine that great attention to gameplay with the power of Star Wars.”

“There’s never been a better time to be a Star Wars fan. The passion we’re seeing for Star Wars […] is fueling our development teams and our partners to create unique interactive extensions of this deep, meaningful universe. As a game maker, nothing is more exciting,” Soderlund added.

Respawn’s new game isn’t the only upcoming Star Wars title. Visceral Games, which is the team behind Dead Space, is working on a game too.

What’s new in Hungry Shark World? 6 new features revealed

If you’re an avid Hungry Shark Evolution player then Hungry Shark World will more than likely already have hooked your interest.

If you’ve caught a glimpse of the game it might look fundamentally similar to its predecessor. So what’s new? We run-down some of the fun new features.

New worlds to explore

At launch Hungry Shark World will come with three worlds to choose from – Pacific Islands, Arctic Ocean, Arabian Sea – with different visuals, enemies and areas to discover. More worlds will be added in future updates, as can be selected from the world map, while purchasable maps will detail various goodies’ locations if you’re feeling flushed with cash.

Daily missions and live events

Each new day that elapses introduces a trio of new “missions” – say, swim 5,000m, or eat 20 divers – that will reap you in-game currency rewards (in the form of coins or gems).

Ubisoft / Future Games Of London

In addition there’s an all-new live events, where you can compete to come out on top for that day in a given mission. The top one per cent will win a prize, with the top five and 20 per cent winning other lesser valuable prizes. These might be modification items for your shark, new sharks, currency, and so forth. It’s a social driving incentive as much as anything.

Enhanced items & pets

If putting a waxed-up moustache onto a whale shark sounds too dangerous to do in real life then, well, here’s your chance in a gaming context. Or maybe a chef’s hat? Crown? It’s all rather funny. You can even show-off your wares to your friends in the Shark Tank social area (but Facebook social media isn’t an essential to play).

But it’s not without purpose: specific items, which cost differing amounts of coins/gems, can enhance life longevity by a given percentage, make more coins available during a gold rush, and so on. Things like the jetpack – which was available in Evolution – make traversing land easier, which is ideal if you’re looking to mow down a bunch of beach-dwellers.

Pets, too, are no longer just sharks. These purchasable sidekicks come in different forms, such as a squid, with additions due in future updates.

Extra sharks, enemies and marine life

Hungry Shark World has a total of 17 species of shark available to unlock (at launch, this could expand), all based on real species (including extinct), each with distinct personalities. You can choose which shark to use at any time, but specific missions requiring certain species to achieve, or certain areas of a level can only be unlocked with a shark substantial enough to break through a barrier.

There’s a whole heap of new marine life too, larger shoals of fish (up to 100 at a time), and more enemies with independent artificial intelligence to handle. So whether it’s a clown fish, a blue whale, or torpedos flying from a sub, you’ll need to think more tactically about take-downs. Or perhaps there’s a Marine on land, complete with AK-47? Yeah, that happens.

Ubisoft / Future Games Of London

Super-size mode

Here’s a fun one. Remember Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and the “S-K-A-T-E” letters strewn throughout a level in silly spots? Well, Hungry Shark World has a similar ideal, with the letters “H-U-N-G-R-Y” bobbing about under the waves. Eat them all and you activate surpersize mode, whereby your shark becomes three times as large and can eat, well, anything. Mines? No problem.

Greater graphical dynamism

It kind of goes without saying, but Hungry Shark World looks a great deal better than Hungry Shark Evolution too. The new title can plug into and take advantage of the latest hardware, so it can really pull on that Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. The models look better, the camera dynamics make the most of the 3D world and there are more objects on screen. It feels much the same as the older game, but World has more attitude and character to its design.

Hungry Shark World preview: App big fish makes a splash, you’ll be hooked

Hungry Shark World is one of those app-based games that probably commands just as much respect as a major console title. The follow-up to 2013’s Hungry Shark Evolution – which has been downloaded over 230-million times – it’s all about new graphics, new sharks, new worlds and missions.

The premise is simple. You play a shark, one that happens to be – no prizes for guessing – very hungry. It’s like Hungry Hippos in app form meets a bloodier Echo The Dolphin (yes, the cutesy graphics in Hungry Shark can’t hide the fact you’re a vicious marine animal, capable of eating floundering tourists – but there is a “blood off” mode in the settings to help make it more kid-friendly than its 12+ rating suggests).

Eat your way through shoals of fish, divers, turtles, tourists, accidental rubbish and all manner of other aquatic life by dragging your direction of travel anywhere on your Android/iOS device’s screen. Time is against you, with a constantly draining life that you’ll need to keep countering by eating.

Sound familiar? The game feels just like Evolution before it, ableit – wait for it – an evolution of that title. Hungry Shark World not only looks better, but the game is more open too. There are (at launch) three worlds to choose from – Pacific Islands, Arctic Ocean, Arabian Sea – with different visuals, enemies and areas to discover. You’re also not restricted to using a specific shark for a specific world, with a wide variety available as you progress and level-up throughout the game. But acquiring the great white or megalodon won’t be a quick and easy task, you’ll need to dedicate hours of play-time to reap such rewards.

Hungry Shark World is free-to-download, but there is in-game currency in the form of coins and gems. Both can be acquired by playing the game, with gems the rarer commodity. Such currency can be used to revive your shark if you starve or die, in order to continue your point-breaking run; while special items with power boosts are available to buy.

Ubisoft / Future Games Of London

It’s all rather tongue-in-cheek too. If putting a waxed-up moustache onto a whale shark sounds too dangerous to do in real life then, well, here’s your chance in gaming context. Or maybe a chef’s hat? Crown? There are all kinds with various actions: some slow life depletion, others add additional life restoration or make more coins available, and so on. You can even show-off your wares to your friends in the Shark Tank social area (but Facebook social media isn’t an essential to play).

Missions update daily to provide rewards for different tasks, while an all-new live events system will see the top one per cent rewarded with specific items or coins (the top five per cent and top 20 per cent also gain rewards of lesser value).

First Impressions

Hungry Shark World is an evolution over its predecessor. Its gameplay is perhaps predictable, but if the game changed too much then it would lose its identity. Take that as a positive: we’ve enjoyed the way Angry Birds initially progressed, until it spead its wings too far and lost the simplicity and playability of the game (we’re looking at you Angry Birds Action, etc). Hungry Shark has kept to its core.

As one of those titles to dip into and play on the commute, we can see Hungry Shark World being snapped up by a heap of hungry downloaders. It’s not breaking boundaries perhaps, but it’s a fun-to-play freebie with some cheeky comical elements. And it’s available right now for iOS and Android.

YouTube could soon offer a paid service that streams cable channels

YouTube is getting into premium online television. Like, a subscription-based service that’ll let you stream cable channels.

Now, Hulu has just confirmed it is doing the same thing. It basically wants to go after Dish’s Sling TV and Sony’s PlayStation Vue, both of which offer so-called “skinny bundles” of cable channels, which you can stream for rates starting at $20 a month. Bloomberg News claimed YouTube has been working on a similar streaming service that will offer skinny bundles, but YouTube has been developing the project since 2012.

However, YouTube is reportedly rushing things now that Hulu is getting into online TV. The service, which is expected to be called Unplugged, should launch by 2017. YouTube has already made infrastructure changes so that it can move forward. It is also targeting a $35-or-under price range. So far, YouTube has been unable to ink deals with major content players like NBCUniversal, CBS, Twenty-First Century Fox, and Viacom.

If you recall, Apple ran into the same roadblocks. It’s long been rumoured to be working on a service that’ll stream cable channels, but like Google-owned YouTube, it hasn’t locked down any deals. Still, YouTube is mulling around different ideas in an effort to make Unplugged compelling to cord-cutters. It might sell theme packs of less-watched channels. For instance, a “lifestyle” bundle might include the Style Network.

Unplugged will of course be a paid service, and if successful, should become another source of revenue for YouTube, which so far relies on serving up adverts on videos as well as the new YouTube Red subscription plan that provides access to exclusive videos.

Become a cyber security expert with the Pay What You Want: Ethical Hacker and Pentester Pro Bundle

Safeguarding your personal data and your business against hackers shouldn’t be a “20/20 hindsight” experience in which you repair the damage incurred.

With a familiarity in the methods of security penetration provided in the Ethical Hacker and Pentester Pro Bundle, you can stay ahead of the hacking game and sharpen your career prospects. And the best part? You get to pick the price!

Gain the tools for success across 9 in-depth courses in the Pay What You Want: Ethical Hacker and Pentester Pro Bundle, building important network security skills. You’ll dive into the world of pentesting, or penetration testing, in which you determine the reliability and security of systems. As you become acquainted with Android Malware, the methods hackers use to attack the Android operating system, you’ll learn what it takes to prevent digital catastrophe.

As for Windows aficionados, Metasploit will help you learn how to build Trojans and backdoors, teaching you what to look for in a data breach.

You’ll also tackle the high-level programming language of Python, to expedite code delivery and system integration, as well as create system security programs. With your newfound familiarity, you’ll use Python to manage Linux systems and perform security tasks such as network scanning and open port scanning.

From there, you’ll learn to use the Racket interpreter to explore various syntactic forms and how they map to existing syntactic forms. Additionally, you’ll learn the web framework of Django, as well as the open-source premium programming language Go Lang, developed by Google to be flexible and work efficiently with concurrencies.

Courses include:

Kali Linux Tutorials Course
Python Programming, Zero to Hero
Linux System Administration with Python
Scheme Programming Course
Django Unchained with Python
Haskell Programming
Ethical Hacking and Certification Training Course
Go Lang Programming Training
Scala Programming

A combined  £979.47 ($1,431) value can be yours for whatever you’d like to pay, for a limited time only from Pocket-lint Deals.

For “Pay What You Want” bundles, you can get the Go Lang Programming Training and Scala Programming courses for as little as you desire. Beat the average price to unlock the full bundle. And with the Ethical Hacker and Pentester Pro Bundle, a portion of the profits will go to support Save The Children. So while you’re leveling up your skills and career potential, you’ll also support a good cause.

Plus, make it onto the leaderboard at any point during the sale and gain 1 entry to our exclusive $1000 iTunes Gift Card giveaway! Reach the top, and gain 5 entries!

Vine’s Windows 10 app is a great way to watch its short videos

Vine finally debuted an official Windows 10 app today, which you can find for free on the Windows Store. It offers everything you’d expect: A selection of the latest trending Vine videos, as well as the ability to explore videos in different category channels. While you can use the app without signing up for a Vine account, it’s far more functional once you log in. You can like, follow and share videos as usual, and adding a video of your own is as simple as dropping it into the app. Unique to the Windows 10 app: you can also add Vine categories as Live Tiles in the Start menu.

I’ve always found Vine’s short looping videos amusing, but I rarely find the time to browse its website or mobile apps. The Windows 10 app is something different: It’s a much faster and simpler way to view Vine videos. It makes the service feel more like flipping around TV channels, or browsing Netflix’s apps. It’s basically the ideal consumption experience. Videos load quickly, although the app sometimes mixes up the videos and their descriptions. It’s far easier to shoot and upload Vines from your phone, so don’t expect too many Windows users to become Vine stars just yet.

Source: Windows Store, Vine, Microsoft

Embrace your inner DJ with McDonald’s McTrax placemat

Would you like a side of sick beats with those french fries? McDonald’s Netherlands has you covered with the McTrax Placemat, a sheet of paper that allows you to connect with your smartphone to channel your inner Diplo.

The placemat, built in conjunction with digital production agency This Page Amsterdam and ad company TBWA/Neboko, was introduced as a cool way to help foster creativity in restaurant patrons. While the mat itself is simply made of paper, it’s printed with conductive ink that allows you to connect your smartphone to transform your entire tray into a DJ station.

Using your hands and the “buttons” on the mat, you can connect via your phone and record your own voice snippets, use prerecorded loops to create beats, and serve up your own musical productions all while munching on a Big Mac. The app supports both iOS and Android devices, so if you have a smartphone and an innermost desire to make sweet, sweet music, you can get involved. McDonald’s America, where are you on this?

Via: Geeky Gadgets

Source: Adweek